In real-time online conferencing, a meeting host invites participants. Some of the invited participants decline to attend with a message to the host well before the meeting. Once the online conference for that meeting begins, other participants may not be able to tell who was invited. The other participants will not know the reason given for declining. The host may or may not remember and may or may not verbally indicate the reason to other participants. This lack of information may lead to repeated requests to join and/or messages to the declining participants seeking again to obtain the reason for declining.